Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 227 pages of information about Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific.

The month of May was occupied in preparations for
our departure from the Columbia. On the 25th,
Messrs. Wallace and Halsey returned from their winter
quarters with seventeen packs of furs, and thirty-two
bales of dried venison. The last article was
received with a great deal of pleasure, as it would
infallibly be needed for the journey we were about
to undertake. Messrs. Clarke, D. Stuart and M’Kenzie
also arrived, in the beginning of June, with one hundred
and forty packs of furs, the fruit of two years’
trade at the post on the Okenakan, and one year
on the Spokan.[O]

[Footnote O: The profits of the last establishment
were slender; because the people engaged at it were
obliged to subsist on horse-flesh, and they ate ninety
horses during the winter.]

The wintering partners (that is to say, Messrs. Clarke
and David Stuart) dissenting from the proposal to
abandon the country as soon as we intended, the thing
being (as they observed) impracticable, from the want
of provisions for the journey and horses to transport
the goods; the project was deferred, as to its execution,
till the following April. So these gentlemen,
having taken a new lot of merchandise, set out again
for their trading posts on the 7th of July. But
Mr. M’Kenzie, whose goods had been pillaged
by the natives (it will be remembered), remained at
Astoria, and was occupied with the care of collecting
as great a quantity as possible of dried salmon from
the Indians. He made seven or eight voyages up
the river for that purpose, while we at the Fort were
busy in baling the beaver-skins and other furs, in
suitable packs for horses to carry. Mr. Reed,
in the meantime, was sent on to the mountain-passes
where Mr. Miller had been left with the trappers, to
winter, there, and to procure as many horses as he
could from the natives for our use in the contemplated
journey. He was furnished for this expedition
with three Canadians, and a half-breed hunter named
Daion, the latter accompanied by his wife and
two children. This man came from the lower Missouri
with Mr. Hunt in 1811-’12.

Our object being to provide ourselves, before quitting
the country, with the food and horses necessary for
the journey; in order to avoid all opposition on the
part of the Northwest Company, we entered into an
arrangement with Mr. M’Tavish. This gentleman
having represented to us that he was destitute of
the necessary goods to procure wherewith to subsist
his party on their way homeward, we supplied him from
our warehouse, payment to be made us in the ensuing
spring, either in furs or in bills of exchange on
their house in Canada.

CHAPTER XIV.

Arrival of the Ship “Albatross.”—­Reasons for the Non-Appearance of
the Beaver at Astoria.—­Fruitless Attempt of Captain Smith on a
Former Occasion.—­Astonishment and Regret of Mr. Hunt at the
Resolution of the Partners.—­His Departure.—­Narrative of the
Destruction of the Tonquin.—­Causes of that Disaster.—­Reflections.